Opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez is taken into a car after surrendering to police in Caracas in February.

Opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez is taken into a car after surrendering to police in Caracas in February.

Photo: MERIDITH KOHUT / New York Times

Image 2 of 4

Supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro take part in an anti-U.S. demonstration in Caracas.

Supporters of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro take part in an anti-U.S. demonstration in Caracas.

Photo: JUAN BARRETO / AFP/Getty Images

Image 3 of 4

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (C) greets supporters during a demostration in Caracas on December 15, 2014. Thousands of government supporters took to the streets criticising the new sanctions against Venezuela, which the US Congress has approved after considering the government's treatment of opposition protests earlier this year a violation of human rights. less

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (C) greets supporters during a demostration in Caracas on December 15, 2014. Thousands of government supporters took to the streets criticising the new sanctions against ... more

Photo: JUAN BARRETO / AFP/Getty Images

Image 4 of 4

Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez defiant at trial

1 / 4

Back to Gallery

CARACAS, Venezuela — Locked up and denounced by Venezuela’s government as a terrorist, Leopoldo Lopez may be out of sight, but he is not out of mind.

Building-size posters of the charismatic opposition leader shouting, with his fist pumped into the air, dot wealthy Caracas neighborhoods. The same image can be found stenciled on the walls in the pro-government slums, but below the word “Murderer.”

President Nicolas Maduro raises the specter of his foe nearly every night, using his televised addresses to denounce the 43-year-old Harvard graduate who, despite having been jailed since February, has become Venezuela’s most popular politician as well as a human-rights icon drawing international pressure on the government.

President Trump addresses nation after mass shooting at Florida SchoolWhite House

Accused of inciting violent protests in early 2014, and the threat of a 13-year prison term hanging over him, Lopez is again exhibiting the defiance he used to call opponents of the South American country’s socialist government into the streets, but now in a windowless courtroom secured behind four military checkpoints. During his most recent appearance in the ongoing trial, the square-jawed Lopez delivered a rollicking, hour-long speech fit for a political rally.

“I have to tell you, when we get out, we will be even more determined,” he told Judge Susana Barreiros.

The proceedings have been almost completely closed to the public. In November, the Associated Press had a rare opportunity to witness the trial.

The tall former triathlete was surprisingly gaunt, and a thick beard covered his familiar clean-shaven face. But his powerful voice still filled the room, where his wife grew teary-eyed among some two dozen observers in wooden pews.

Lopez denounced the young judge as lacking courage and compared her to a hired assassin. He held up a book of the writings of Venezuela’s revolutionary leader Simon Bolivar, a distant great uncle of Lopez.

His blue-blood political heritage and old-money roots make him a natural champion of the Venezuelan elite. Accompanied by his photogenic wife, a former TV hostess, Lopez comes off as a Venezuelan Kennedy — albeit a stridently conservative one.

Of the two factions opposing Venezuela’s unsteady administration, Lopez represents the more radical extreme. While others were advocating gradual electoral change, Lopez called hundreds of thousands of supporters into the streets to demand that Maduro resign only months into his six-year term.

Violence stemming from the protests left more than 40 people dead.

Lopez doesn’t appear to have become any more eager for compromise. Unity isn’t a goal in and of itself, he said outside the courtroom doors.

The defense considers the trial a circus, with Maduro bent on keeping Lopez behind bars.

So why put on such a strenuous show for a judge whose hands may be tied?